Author
Topic: Béla Tarr (Read 2144 times)

i was surprised as you are that there isn't already a béla tarr topic. maybe i don't know how to use a search engine? anyway

jared woodland and janice lee, who are working on a critical book about satantango (film and book), today began:

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What follows is a collection of take-by-take notes on disc one of the film and the corresponding passages of the novel. (Notes on discs two and three are forthcoming.) Our time stamps are based on the Facets Satantango DVD (2008). Throughout the notes, we acknowledge differences between the novel’s content and the film’s content, as well as translation differences between the novel and the DVD’s subtitles.

i imagine this appeals to people who've already seen satantango, and i hope that's a lot of people

examples

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The camera (which has made an elongated counterclockwise pivot) is now at the other end of the hall, where the other clock is. A man comes out of the door in front of Irimias and Petrina and asks, “What are you waiting for?” This could be a question for any of the characters in Satantango; they’re all waiting. Funny that the man asks the only two who have some purpose and agency. Turns out Irimias and Petrina are on the wrong floor (Kafka!); the man leads them down the hall, toward the camera. Sound of heels.

[46:55–47:33 / page 25]

and

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(In the novel, this is the scene in which Irimias and Petrina discover they’re on the wrong floor and in the wrong department. On page 30, they come to the right place.) An uncharacteristically cut-heavy part of the film, this section offers more exposition and anticipatory dialogue than anything we’ve seen so far. It begins with two leather chairs flanking a table. Behind the furniture there are dark wood cabinets, shelves. From the right side of the frame, a man enters. He’s wearing a blazer over his shoulders like a shawl, and he’s smoking a cigarette with his right hand. He moves with intensity and quickness—qualities none of the other characters have shown yet. The camera follows the man into a room where Irimias and Petrina are seated at a desk with their backs facing us. More dark wood. The man sits on the other side of the desk; he’s visible between Irimias and Petrina, who stand up. The man moves his right index finger from side to side, apparently to tell Irimias and Petrina to hand over their summonses. There are stars on his jacket’s epaulettes: He’s a captain. Irimias and Petrina put their summonses on the desk. After the men introduce themselves to him, the captain says, “Here, it all depends on what mood I’m in.” Reverse shot: Respectively, Irimias and Petrina look confounded and dumb. Back to captain, who asks why the men didn’t get jobs after they were “released.” He also mentions that they’re “under surveillance.” Irimias assures the captain that they’re on the side of the law; Petrina says they’re respectable citizens whose “services have been used for a good few years.” Incredulous, the captain accuses them of lawbreaking and villainy, says their lives have not been a tragedy. Some cigarette smoke comes into the frame from right. “Keeping order appears to be the business of authorities,” says the captain, “but it’s the business of us all. Order. Freedom, however, is nothing human. It’s something divine….” The camera moves in on the captain, who continues:

If you’re looking for a link, think of Pericles, [who says] order and freedom are linked by passion. We have to believe in both; we suffer from both…. But human life is meaningful, rich, beautiful, and filthy. It links everything. It mistreats freedom, wasting it. People don’t like freedom; they are afraid of it. The strange thing is there is nothing to fear about freedom. Order, on the other hand, can often be frightening.

Camera shows Irimias staring flatly as captain tells him he has “no choice but to collaborate” (my emphasis). Back to captain. Smoking, captain says Irimias and Petrina are outlaws and they know why. Looking down, presumably at their file, he says, “I don’t think I have to read the whole lot [of crimes?].” He tells Irimias he must work for him or he has no choice. (Seems he’s suggesting choice only comes from order.) Camera cuts back to Irimias; he stares at the captain. Camera is now back at the doorway, in the same place it was at the beginning of the scene. Captain dismisses Irimias and Petrina. They get up and walk toward camera. Captain stays put.

Seems heavy on literal description of what is happening on screen. More analysis and less telling us what we can se with our own eyes would be good.

I see this a lot in Kubrick analyses. People get caught up with describing what's on screen like they're talking to a blind person, it makes you feel like you're really engaging with the material but it's just a waste of text.

Keen to read the juicy bits though. The scale of this guy's work has probably put off a lot of in depth explorations into what the hell is going on. Sort of like with Barry Lyndon.

today they presented an excellent article. i think you just skimmed it

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Though the density of text in the novel (there are no paragraph breaks) creates a lack of a clear hierarchy of action or language, in the film we follow the camera’s cue, the camera’s gaze. As Futaki hides in the other room, we stay on his side of the door. A mini-drama unfolds on the other side, but we are prevented from being invested in that. Or at least our distance from the scene doesn’t allow for that kind of emotional complacency, at least not yet. We wait with Futaki. Even after Futaki enters the other side to retrieve his cane and exists for a moment in that other space, currently inaccessible to us, the camera chooses to linger here. The indifference of the scene, the door, the camera. Then, with the waiting, the textures of the wallpaper and curtains starts to take on a strange form, as when you stare at a word too long and it begins to morph into something unnatural.

In a week of a fever/massive headaches I've been watching Werckmeister on repeat in pure awe...Then recently moved on to The Turin Horse and I'm finding myself not sure what to make of it. The film's world is so one-dimensional, lacking a lot of the complexities of life...I compare a film like this to films that are on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, like sentimentally charged Hollywood films. But I can't argue that 100% because the cinematography was a force of its own in the film, and not just in an aesthetic way. There was something within the camera, especially in the fact that it never stopped moving. It never was standing, always on steadicam even in static shots. It was probably the most perceptive/emotional being in the film, which can add another lens, but I still can't completely ride on that. I read this little quote, an audience member asked Tarr "where is the hope", and he said "the hope is you watch this movie".I want to see what other people thought of it, and the rest of his work, and here's hoping that Tarr wakes up realizing every day doesn't have to be like the last, and makes a fucking flamboyant color film next.I still haven't seen Satantango, that one is next.

Bela Tarr's interviews are extremely interesting as well, because his outlook on life and cinema is completely unique, in a way that he doesn't even consider himself to be a filmmaker. It's reminiscent of Tarkovsky's Sculpting in Time...but not completely. And you can tell the difference.

The indifference of the scene, the door, the camera. Then, with the waiting, the textures of the wallpaper and curtains starts to take on a strange form, as when you stare at a word too long and it begins to morph into something unnatural.

I think the word "indifference" here is something to take away from it. The camera acts as if any particle of matter contains the same amount of value and meaning as another, even morally speaking. Which gives us as the audience the opportunity to understand the infinite amount of beauty/shit around us that may be just as important/trivial as we are.

are you going to say just that? maybe or maybe not but i like you either way. good surf

vice quote:

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Damnation, a new novel by Janice Lee, is a great new creation in the tradition of directly growing your own organism out of someone else’s blood. Taking its title from the Béla Tarr film of the same name, the book opens with a foreword describing its relation to Tarr’s body of work—specifically his long shots, which is as signature a device to him as an arched eyebrow is to the Rock. Damnation makes no bones about the fact that it sets its world in Tarr’s cosmology, sharing many of his films’ thematic elements: God, love, violence, music, family, ecstasy.

And yet, if you weren’t told of the connection, you’d never know. The novel is comprised of dozens of small moving parts, each quite compact and simple. Essentially, the book follows the effect a cryptic holy book has on a small town. Shortly after it appears, it begins to drive the townspeople mad. The prose has an essential and timeless element, somewhere near the tone of early Cormac McCarthy and the novels of José Saramago, while also quietly subverting itself throughout using deceptively casual formal digressions like lists, clipped dialogue, monologue, fragmented dream imagery, and repeating threads.

an example of a fun thing about being interested in both literature and cinema is what happened there with the mentioning of cormac mccarthy and josé saramago in relation to the written style from lee referring to tarr's damnation. bountiful treasures, you know

(edit)taking the excuse to write out a László Krasznahorkai sentence. two tarr movies are adaptations of his novels, and he's written with tarr the screenplays for damnation, the man from london, and the turin horse. this is from the melancholy of resistance, which was adapted into werckmeister harmonies. i think most people would say this and be met with eyes of critical gaze. if you don't already know, Krasznahorkai is respected in literature

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He surveyed this endless, sharp, clear prospect and it shook him with with its supremely exclusive reality, shook him because it was so hard to see this world produced by his anxiety, a world of infinitely capricious reality had-for humankind at least-to come to an end, an end despite the fact that there was no end, and by that token no centre either, and we simply are, one element in the beating pulse of a space containing a million other elements, with which we harmonized and interacted with all our guiding reflexes . . . But of course on examination none of these things lasted longer than an instant as soon as the glimmering vision cohered it splintered in the blinking of an eye; it splintered, its significance reduced to that of a spark which perhaps did no more than alert us to the dying of the fire in the grate which glowed once then disintegrated, as if aware of the worthlessness of its existence, dying in a single flash of light if only so its brief intensity might illuminate everything he had regarded on the way home, in his fateful decision, in the moment of judgment by the gate, as a 'potentially fatal mistake'.

Satantango last night. I really just want to be the person to tell everyone to fucking pirate it and plunge. I'm really really restraining myself from hyperbole right now, a cheap way of hyperbole I know. Ah FACK. Words will tarnish that experience.

*also I don't recommend anyone to watch ^that documentary in above post, I'm trying as hard as I can to erase it from my memory. Some things we shouldn't know.

I heard about that from a friend Jenk, what's funny is that it went by ridiculously fast (I'm sure you know). Literally bowing to the screen from beginning to end. For some reason it's a film that you just sit upright Indian style for 7 hours. I'd actually say it went by (way) faster than Turin Horse.

JW, we started it at 19:00 ended at 2:00ish (lightness to darkness, but always within light from the screen and a candle (that never went out)). The second it started I immediately wished I was in a theater, but desperate times take desperate measures, and that was still one of the...........

Satantango viewing diet regimen: A huge vat of coffee, 2 wine bottles, and a small dinner of sausage, potatoes, and lentils. No other way.

*you know those films where one sound outside of the film can ruin your experience? This is not one of them. My apartment complex was constantly barking, laughing, screaming in the periphery and it only just added to the film. This film isn't an escape but rather a mirror.